A capacity development framework was developed jointly with the Minister of Education in Afghanistan for Afghanistan's national assessment team. A high level goal was established, namely, to develop and implement a learning assessment program in Afghanistan to inform education policy makers and educational practitioners on the quality of education outcomes in Afghanistan. The framework defined, examined past and proposed new learning activities and learning outcomes, and identified capacity indicators that were judged to lead to the goal. To support the implementation of the Monitoring Trends in Educational Growth program in Afghanistan, several workshops were provided.

National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in India

ACER was part of a consortium providing technical support and capacity building for the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in India. Between 2014 and 2016 ACER provided activities to support the design and implementation of the inaugural Class X National Achievement Survey (NAS). The capacity building activities included:

Indonesia National Assessment Centre

For Indonesia National Assessment Centre, ACER has organised several types of capacity development activities. These include:

short study visits for Indonesian staff to ACER, on the development of a large scale computer based assessment delivery platform: system architecture; database design; item banking; security; helpdesking; user experience acceptance testing; candidate management; cloud hosting

workshops

technical meetings in Indonesia on computer based test delivery in Indonesia and the psychometrics of mode effects and determining the equivalence of parallel forms.

Pacific Island Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (PILNA )

ACER staff are using GEM Centre expertise and experience to provide system strengthening and capacity development support to a number of Pacific Island countries participating in a regional assessment program known as PILNA (Pacific Island Literacy and Numeracy Assessment). The support has been delivered through the Educational Quality and Assessment Programme (EQAP) of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC). Support will also be given to the EQAP teams on data analysis, reporting and dissemination to stakeholders. ACER will provide advice and support in the design and development of an improved regional assessment program for the future.

The first step in providing support for the SEA-PLM countries has been an orientation visit by the ACER SEA-PLM team to gain an understanding of the level of capacity in each of the countries and to introduce the country team members to the relevant areas and staff back at ACER who will be able to provide support where needed. The second string of capacity development has been a series of regional workshops which have covered areas such as assessment frameworks, item development, sampling, data management and field operations. Looking to the future ACER will carry out workshops in coder training and data analysis. The third area of capacity development is the allocation of staff on a needs basis to countries where special conditions may arise.

Large-scale learning assessments: A handbook for the Indian context (2015)

The GEM Centre, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan Technical Cooperation Agency (RMSA-TCA), managed by Cambridge Education, have developed a handbook to support the development and implementation of large-scale assessment projects in India. The handbook is intended to support the capacity building of educational policymakers and planners as well as academic and technical staff involved in planning and conducting assessment projects.

The GEM Centre has undertaken research in partnership with UNESCO-Bangkok’s Network on Educational Quality in the Asia-Pacific (NEQMAP) region, to examine the ways in which large-scale assessments of students’ learning are being used in education policy processes in the Asia-Pacific region, and to identify important factors that influence the use of assessment data for decision-making.